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in the UK we have a tv station called Dave. Its full of so called manly programmes and is actually pretty good.

anyway, i had being living abroad for a few years and just returned to the uk, wherein I rented a house with two girls and a guy called Dave. So, I turned on the tv and the digital cable and a channel called "Dave" popped up. i thought to myself holy shit this is cool. you can save tv shows now and make a channel to watch them on? this is the channel dave saved for himself?? (i hadnt heard about tivo at this point either) and then the fucking voiceover guy comes on in between shows and says "Next on Dave, we have another episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson...." and i fucking lost it. HOLY FUCK THIS IS THE COOLEST THING EVER! WHEN WAS THIS INVENTED?!?!!?

a week or two later, i went to someone elses house and they were watching dave and i immediately thought to myself "you are a fucking tit."

When I was six, my dad started building a "garage for his lawnmower" in the back yard in the few weeks leading up to my birthday. I thought it was super cool, and I asked him if he would let me use it as a treehouse. Turns out, people don't build garages for lawnmowers, and I had a kick-ass treehouse for the next few years.

Edit about lawnmower garages: apparently they exist, but I don't think they're put on primo treehouse real estate. My parents still laugh at how gullible I was, believing that my dad would take the trouble to build a garage for the lawnmower in the middle of the backyard. I was six!

Thanks, I've always wanted one. What he built was just a 25x25 shack in the backyard, nothing aerial about it.

But, if you ever get a chance to watch a tradesman (in my father's case, electrician) try to build something outside of their trade, do so; the results are hilarious. The "clubhouse" had electricity, but almost everything else was longer, shorter, or not level. He also drank quite heavily during the construction, so take that for what you will.

My grandfather told me this while driving through the Cascade Mountain range in Washington. We drove by a "watch for falling rock" sign and he said "you know kids, Falling Rock is an old Indian Chief that lives up in the mountains and if you talk too much or make too much noise he shoots you with an arrow". My brother and I spent the remaining drive silent.

And my father always told us that Falling Rock was the name of an Indian Brave sent on a quest to get 3 impossible things in order to marry the wealthy chief's daughter. He's earned the first two, but is still looking for the third. And since the chief has now passed away, the daughter has posted the Falling Rock signs all over the country to remind everyone to keep a sharp eye out for this brave... and send him home as soon as you see him.

TrollDad is now TrollGrandad, and still tells this story when the family meets at campsites.

My parents were notorious liars, but I believed them nevertheless. I remember one in particular. My mom told me that I could never get a nose ring because there was an artery that ran through your nose and if you punctured it you'd die. My current girlfriend was telling me how she used to have a nose ring when she was in high school and I uttered "But weren't you afraid getting it would kill you?!"

She then very slowly explained to me that I'm very very gullible. I believed her, I guess.

There is a nerve that runs through your forehead and eyebrow that can paralyze your face if it's severed. My mom has one side of her face looking permanently Botox-ed thanks to a car accident at 16 in which she took off the rear-view mirror on a VW Bug with her eyebrow.

Not myself, but a past roommate, at 22 years old, honestly believed that pepperoni was made from paper. She said that when she was a kid, she was crying because someone told her it came from pigs. Her parents straightened her out by telling her it was made out of PAPER, which is why the name is so close to paper(oni) and why it is so thin!

SHE ARGUED WITH ME ABOUT THIS FOR A GOOD 20 MINUTES BEFORE I MADE HER CALL HER PARENTS.

I hate this let's-hide-the-fact-where-processed-food-comes-from mentality. I'm always honest and upfront about what's on the table and make sure my kids know we're having Bambi for dinner one day and Babe the pig the next. I often take them to farms or the zoo and let them know which animals we eat. Heck, I even took them whale watching once and then put a slab of whale meat on the bbq for them to try once.

The only thing I tip toe around is the gritty details of the slaughtering, but they know about the process, which is important I think. But with every uncomfortable fact I try to weight it against a positive fact, like how nutrition is important and meat is a big factor.

If they decide later to become vegetarians because of this, that's their choice, but at least it's an informed choice.

There's a video from the onion news about how skullfucking is a huge problem. The first few times I watched it I either didn't know what the Onion was yet or didn't see the logo, because I believed the shit out of that story.

That if I stood really still, people would think I was a really well made statue. I stood on the roof of my neighbour's car when I was four or five, and I still fully recall how batshit insane my dad went when he saw me through the window.

When I was but a wee tot, I had somehow come up with the idea that the tap would return water that went down the drain. So if I wanted a drink or to brush my teeth after washing my hands, I would run the water for a few seconds first to "get the soap out".

My mom didn't want me drinking coffee when I was a child so she told me that drinking coffee gives you lice. Yep. Believed that until junior high. Still don't drink coffee and I've never had lice...coincidence? Definitely.

That spiders crawled into your mouth while you slept because it was dark and moist, and that you swallowed them, and that's why you wake up with a scratchy throat. My 7th grade science teacher told this to the class, and I slept with duct tape over my mouth for a month before my parents asked what the hell I was doing.

Also, when I was four or five I saw a big scar on my dad's stomach and asked what that was from. He said "Knife fight" and I went "Ooh. Yes. That happens to adults." Remembered that about 7 years later and realized that this seemed very unlikely for my father. I asked Dad why the hell he was in a knife fight and he treated me like a crazy person. No memory of his terrible lie. It was really from getting his appendix out. Actually he lied about things all of the time. He was like Calvin's dad. I never really learned to stop being so gullible ;_;

By letting them know that spiders crawl into your mouth while they're sleeping and that they swallow them and did they want some of my duct tape? They acquired good Parent Voice and let me know that was crap. I didn't really want to believe it so I decided that I didn't. Now I just worry that spiders will crawl onto my bed and bite me all night.

This was a barrier that actually prevented me from learning French as a kid. I never thought like "This thing right here is a "chat"" I always thought "He said 'chat' which means Cat, which is this thing"

See I never had that watershed moment. It kinda happened for some stuff like frere(brother), je ne sais pas (I don't know(coincidentally my most used phrase in class)), and some other stuff. However it never became universal. sigh I still wanna learn.

I love that moment when you're trying to carry on a conversation in one language, get stuck on a word that you know, and cycle through the other languages you know hoping something will spark your memory.

I was doing an engineering apprenticeship at about 17 and used to have to drive around a lot. I didn't have a license, so would always be in the passenger seat when my 'mentor' drove. He told me the car had a voice activated radio, and then proceeded to demonstrate by saying stuff like "volume up" or "radio 1" and sure enough, the radio would respond. I spent the next few months happily and successfully changing radio stations and stuff with just my voice.

One day when he had nipped into the shop and left the engine running with me in the passenger seat, i noticed the voice recognition system wasn't working. I was practically shouting at it when he returned to the car. It all clicked into place when, after the station changed, i looked over and saw him adjusting the station on the little flappy paddle controls behind the steering wheel! Mortified! I discovered that everyone from our section knew about this when i told him i worked it out and was greeted by gails of laughter the next time i went into the office! Had to leave to finally live that one down :)

My middle school math teacher used to tell a similar story about when he was in Vietnam. He was an airforce navigator in some sort of huge plane and somehow for some reason his then-girlfriend got a ride in the plane once.

He convinced her that sitting a the navigator's station (bit more back in the plane, not in the cockpit) she could voice control the plane. They just had the radio open to the pilots in the cockpit with the door closed. She would make commands like "bank left" and "ascend" and the pilots would comply. She believed the plane was the pinnacle of technology and voice controllable for even the untrained.

haha that's a really good one. I pulled the same joke on my little brother when I first driving. I would also play with the dimmer switch for the dash lights to make them look like they were flickering and tell him we might not have enough battery to make it home from where ever we were... good times

That reminds me of some pranks we used pull on trainees back in my restaurant days.

Industrial coffee machines are made to be hooked up to a hot water line so that you don't have to constantly fill them and empty them at the end of the day. So, when training new servers the first thing I'd do when learning the closing side work was hand them a pitcher and tell them to empty out the coffee pot. We'd then rate them on how many pitchers they'd get through before they'd figure it out. I did feel bad when one girl was reduced to tears when, after about 15-20 pitchers of hot water, she realized that all of the snickering going on was for her.

Another sending someone to a neighboring restaurant to borrow some non-existent piece of equipment like a "steam pot"or "roast beef separator". That's a lot of fun when the folks at the restaurant they go to know what's up and tell them they already loaned it out to another neighboring restaurant and to try them.

Edit: Wow, I don't think I've had so many replies to a comment since I told a story about grabbing the wrong girls ass once and didn't finish with what happened afterward.

Okay, on the ass grabbing thing.

I was working and saw this girl from behind and thought it was a friend of mine who was in for dinner or that night's show. I ran up and goosed her. For those of you who don't know what "goosing" is, it's when you sneak up behind someone and suddenly grab a handful of buns in one fast squeeze. They will jump. For a smooth resolution and interpretation of your intention -- to make them jump - it really helps if you know the person. I didn't know the girl who jumped up, spun 180 degrees, and landed facing me with a surprised O-face that'd rival the results of "the shocker". I immediately launched into "oh-my-god-I-totally-thought-you-were-somebody-else" and I guess she saw the sincerity and mirrored shock in my face because her expression turned into a grin, she said "Ah! Okay..." and she started laughing. So, off the hook, I started laughing, too, but then abruptly stopped and said, "Really?! I'm gonna have to remember that that works", winked, and said, "Just kidding. Sorry again!" and walked off.

I worked in a kitchen. We'd have newbies "change the air" in the walk in freezer. See, every week or so, the air gets stale, and it spoils the food. So you have to take a trash bag, fill it with air in the walk in, then close it off and run outside to go empty it.

You had to make sure not to let any stale air out in the kitchen, because it would just find it's way back in to the walk-in. Don't worry though, it's a small freezer, it only took about fifteen bags.

I wonder if somewhere out there, there's a kid telling his friends, "I used to work with some of the stupidest people -- they actually believed the air in their walk-in freezer could get stale. They'd make me take a trash bag, fill it with air in the walk-in, then go outside to empty it. Seriously, not even kidding. And if you accidentally opened the bag in the kitchen, they'd freak out and be all, 'oh my god, the stale air will get into the freezer!' Bunch of fuckwits, I tell you what." takes a long toke on his joint, then continues story "But whatever man, I needed the job. Do what you gotta do, you know? It's annoying corporate America always puts the morons in charge of actual, you know, smart people."

I had a kitchen manager who actually tried to make me mop the walk in freezer, and WASN'T joking. I tried to explain to her that a) It wasn't going to work, and b) Any water in there would freeze and be dangerous.

She wrote me up, then tried to do it herself and practically shredded a mop on the floor, and then the GM the next day came in and bitched because the walk in freezer floor was ice.

And yet no justice, I was still in shit for not following directions. Bitch.

Aww man. You totally passed up a great opportunity to turn it around on him. You could have "confided" in a coworker or two that you had figured it out the first day, and had since enjoyed ordering your mentor to change the radio station. "Don't tell anyone though, I want to see how long it'll last."

Eventually it would spread around the section and either get back to him, or become an even better in-joke among you guys.

Funny enough, I guess it's true, he got to control the radio for a few months without even lifting a finger. It's like your friend telling you that this new floor vacuum robot also cleans your whole house while your at work, and then your friend sneaks in your house everyday and cleans it up for you so you think your robot did it. And then 3 months later, he's all like "haha i tricked you, it was me cleaning your house the whole time!!!"

I was told that breathing gasoline killed brain cells. So I'm ~8 or something, and I'm thinking "holy shit, all these times at the gas station with my parents, I'm losing fucking brain cells!" THEN, I think "HOLY SHIT! What if I happen to kill that one brain cell that knows how to breathe, and I just stop breathing and die?!" In case you couldn't tell, I clearly had no idea how brain cells worked. Again, I was a kid.

So I'd sit there and hold my breath every time we stopped at a gas station and if I had to breathe, I'd freak out thinking shitshitshit odnt lose that important fucking breathing brain cell shitshitshit!

I don't know how long this went on but when I found out that's really not how shit like that works, I both felt like a total idiot and relieved that I could not breathe comfortably around a god damn gas station.

I very briefly believed, on the strength of why I had just been told, that if you grab a stinging nettle as opposed to brushing against it, it won't sting you. Right up until I actually grabbed it, I believed that.

TIL that "stinging nettle" is an actual thing, and not some odd phrase that my grandpa would say when we wouldn't sit still.

Edit: Just got home and saw the response I got from this.

As to isaac-newton's comment, I've always just called them weeds. Never really over thought about them enough to find the true name

I live in Canada, Toronto to be exact, and yes I have encountered these before.

And finally, the source of my confusion came from my grandfathers thick West Indian accent. When my cousins and I were kids and he was babysitting, he would get frustrated with our inability to sit still for longer than a few seconds so, in his treatening voice, he would say "Yuh rass gah stinga-nettle?" Being terrified kids, we never put much thought into it so naturally we just shook our heads and sat down as quickly as possible. Until now I've never heard the term and had an odd flashback to the days when my grandpa terrified me. Good times :p

When I was about 9 years old, my older brother told me to stop picking my nose or my brain would "cave in" and, because I loved my brother, I believed him. He loves to tell people this story to this day. Because he is a complete asshole.

On a road trip when I was eight, one of the major stops was Mount Rushmore. I was PSYCHED for mt. Rushmore. This was by far, the coolest stop on our otherwise pretty humdrum vacation. My step mother could not figure out why I was so amped to see this particular tourist trap, but she was pleased with my enthusiasm.

We arrived, and I stared up in awe at the impressive carving. It's kind of surreal seeing it in person. I walked up to the little sign with more information about it, and read:

"Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore. Sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum..."

I stepped back slowly, and stared up at the mountain. I turned to my step mother and frowned.

"We seriously drove across six states to see a giant sculpture?"

"Yes..."

"Two guys carved the faces of the presidents out of a mountain... and we drove to see it?"

One of the first movies I ever watched was the first Rambo. (Was born in communist Poland, we didn't get too many movies from the west, etc.)

When the credits started rolling when the movie was done, I thought that it was a list of people that had died during the making of the movie. I thought it was a "This movie is dedicated to all these people who have lost their lives making it" type of thing

Dude, I thought the exact same thing. My dad told me they did. This haunted me as a kid during a lot of movies.

Edit: My dad also made me believe that CGI wasn't a "thing", so I grew up believing that every movie set was built from the ground up. Basically, I grew up believing that the Death Star actually existed and was put into space, blown up, and x-wings actually flew into space for the fight scenes. Pretty sure it all made for an upgraded childhood movie viewing experience, thinking that all of these things actually happened.

Makes them tired, hopefully. Sometimes when my kids (6 and 9) are being crazy I'll tell them to run to the end of the street and back, and tell me what's there. On Sunday the 9yo was timing himself running to and from the mailbox, and I kept telling him to try again, he could do better than that.

Honestly thought black people have an extra muscle in theirs legs, explaining their athletic ability. My granny told me they got it from running away from lions in Africa. She's totally not racist too.

Back when I was a kid in Iceland, my mothers best friend used to drink this coke called "Tab".. I asked her if I could taste it and instead saying the usual like, No this is a grown-up drink, she told me it was poison and only very few people were able to drink it without dying.. I was so terrified that I never touched "Tab" ever again and I was well in my teens when I discovered the truth...

. . . oh dear god, I think I may have accidentally done this to my son.

When I was a kid, my dad always used to steal/share my happy meal fries, m&m's, and other stuff. Like not even ask or wait until I was done or anything, he'd just helped himself to them while I was eating. It infuriated the hell out of me.

Fast forward, I grow up and have a kid, and I realize why my dad used to do that -- sometimes money is tight, and you want to treat your kid to something (like a happy meal) for being well-behaved, but you can't afford to treat both yourself and your kid. So you treat your kid, and sit with them while they eat their treat. All the while, you're hungry and thinking about the left over meatloaf in the fridge at home that you'll be able to (yum) reheat and eat as soon as you've finished this exhausting day of stupid (yet necessary) errands.

It's really hard not to nibble from whatever snack you bought your kid. At the same time, I don't want to be rude. So the solution I came up with was to, say, peel off the foil on his chocolate milk for him, then take a sip before handing it to him. He'd glare at me, and I'd joke, "Just making sure it's not poisonous."

One of my in-laws heard me say this, and thought it was hilarious. It caught on and became a running family joke -- basically, any time we had to open a pack of something, unwrap a sandwich, open a drink, taste to test the heat of a drink (like hot cocoa frm Starbucks), or even just deliver a plate of food at home, we'd nip a taste from whatever it was, then say, "Just making sure it's not poisoned."

You just made me realize that all the adults around my son may have inadvertently spent years convincing him that everyone is out to poison small children. OH MY GOD, lightbulb, I wonder if this explains his complete lack of curiosity about trying new foods. Holy fuck, I might just be a huge dick.

I had a troll dad, too. He convinced me that he had a magical chant that could get rid of my warts. Had me chanting, "Oh-wa. Tagoo. Siam." I chanted it five times a day, until the teacher at school caught me at it and had words with troll dad.

When I was 3 or 4 (this is one of my first memories), I believed that the boogers inside my nose were shaped like cowboys, but that I always ruined them when I picked my nose. I can remember spending a lot of effort trying to extract the tiny cowboy sculptures intact to no avail.

I thought Narwhals were mythical creatures until about a year ago. When I saw a video if actual Narwhals I was about as excited as I have ever been. I sent it to my friends who proceeded to make fun of me. They still do, and I deserve it all.

To be fair, it's easy to see why people get confused: just like whales and dolphins (which are land mammals that evolved back into ocean-dwelling creatures), Narwhals are mammals that evolved from early unicorns who returned to the sea and interbred with whales, long before the better known land unicorns went extinct and entered into myth (when humans discovered their fossils).

My sister was a bitch. She's my twin and we used to watch movies and TV together all the time. Most of the time we had similar interests but when we didn't we just sat there and dealt with it. But we always ate popcorn after school. When I was young, she trained me that the white pieces of popcorn were better and the yellow buttery ones weren't as bad. I did this for years while she ate the buttery ones all to herself. I eventually figured it out, but to this day I still eat the white ones first. However I don't have to share them anymore so at the end I have a whole bowl of buttery pieces all to my self. Who's laughing now! WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!!!! AAAAAAHHHHAHHAHAHAHAAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My family would go on vacations in the mountains quite a bit when I was little, and there were lots of cow farms up there. The cows stand on the sides of steep hills to graze, and my dad told me they were special cows that had two legs shorter on one side so they could comfortably stand on the slope all day. I believed this for maybe a year.

YES, dammit... me too... at like age 10 the older kids were all, "yea man, they totally have those - but too many kids were getting hurt, so a bunch of parents went to the government and they made them illegal."

I was so, so disappointed a couple years later when I found out I had been had...

Not exactly how you may think, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his character on a professor he encountered in medical school name Dr. Joseph Bell. Here is the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell Bell was even said to be involved in the case of Jack the Ripper, working with the police to attempt to solve the case.

Interestingly, the show "House" is loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, but takes is back to it's roots somewhat by returning the character archetype to the medical profession.

Yeah, man, back in my day it was Dory Jr. and Terry Funk from my hometown of Amarillo, TX, pro wrestling pioneers. One time I saw a match and they had this big Oriental guy who did a "judo chop" or something like that on a guy's throat, and he started spitting blood and they were saying he was going to die, etc. I saw the Oriental guy at the K-Mart the next day and I couldn't believe he was just walking around after he'd killed a guy!

This was because of a schoolyard discussion after one of those "don't get in a car with a stranger" lectures at school. We were trying to figure out what child abductors actually did with the kids they took. An older and wiser classmate (i.e., a 3rd grader) told me that if it was a boy, they'd pee in his butt and this would kill him.

My husband told me that baby goats are called goatse and that I should do a google image search to see how cute they are. I believed him up until a picture of goatse was in my face & i let out a very loud scream involuntarily

The best response to this is to express scepticism, and actually consult a dictionary. Then react with surprise, announcing that it actually isn't in there. It's brilliant when you can actually get someone to believe you and check for themself.

I became good friends with an exchange student from Australia (I'm in the U.S.). She had me convinced that it was common to ride kangaroos to school. What really convinced me was how specific she was with the details of the saddle and the grazing pasture where the kangaroos were put out to during class. She even drew me a picture.

When you hold your fingers close together but not yet touching, the gravity between them will pull them together... I made a fool of myself in front of my boyfriend trying to fight the finger gravity. Fuck him.

When I was fifteen, my grandfather died. I had never been to a funeral before. When we went to view the body at the funeral home the day before the funeral, I walked in and my grandfather's body was sitting upright in a chair posed as if he were reading a book. I froze and thought "Is this how this works, they just sit him up in a chair?"
Then he looked up and said "Hi, Bill" to my dad and I almost shit myself. I was fully convinced for about 10 seconds that my grandfather had come back from the dead before my dad introduced me to my grandfather's twin brother, Curtis.

When I was but a wee lad, I would not eat chicken because I didn't like it. So, my mom made some chicken with cheese on top, and told me it was kangaroo and the cheese was the pouch. I thought it was delicious, but my sister thought I was a complete dumbass (and I was). She was all like "it's chicken you retard!!" and i asked her how she could explain the pouch, and she told me it was cheese but I didn't believe it because mom said it was kangaroo.

Looking back, eating kangaroo is illegal and I was a gullible little shit

I had recently gotten chickens and it was the first night i was leaving them outside. They had a coop and an open pen area. Went to the movies with my boyfriend and it started raining. He convinced me that chickens were so stupid they would stare at the sky wondering where the rain was coming from and would drown because their mouths would fill up with water. Called my mom freaking out that she needed to get the chickens inside or they would drown.

That there is a ground dwelling bird native to South Texas that is caught by waving a butterfly net in figure-eight patters in front of you whilst running through the woods and screaming at the top of your lungs.

Not sure, but I'll tell you one thing. I never believed in the fuckin easter bunny. He was always just tooo much to be real. At least santa had a magical form of transportation. Easter bunny just has little furry legs. Even if he is super human fast, he'd fuck people's back yards up or something.

Moved to Seattle when I was 5. Parents did the tourist thing with my younger brother and I. I was out of my MIND excited to visit the Space Needle. To the point my mom told me if I didn't calm down we weren't going to go.

I calmed down, but inside I was about to explode. We get up to the top. Walk around. Then I ask my mom:

"When do we take off!!!?"

My mom stared at me... and had a very soul crushing conversation that even though it was called the "Space" Needle... no. We weren't going to space.